Mr President, ladies
and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure, conscious as I am of the
importance of the event and the honour done to me, that I take the floor
today before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
This is a privilege not just for me in person but for Italy, and
accordingly it also provides an opportunity to express, on behalf
of the Italian nation, the keenest appreciation of the work carried
out, in a period of more than forty years since its inception, by
the Council of Europe, the first institutional expression of our
continent’s aspiration to unity, which has gradually emerged over
the years. Tangible progress has been made in recent decades, but
this cherished aspiration has still not been completely satisfied.

The Council of Europe remains the widest geographical framework
for the vast, ramified process of European unification, but even
more it remains the source of a constant stream of new initiatives
in every debate about the future of Europe, faithful to the ideals
which inspired its founding fathers – from Churchill to Spaak, from Schuman
to De Gasperi and Adenauer – and to those values of freedom, democracy
and the promotion and protection of human rights which symbolise
the very foundations of the European edifice emerging from the ruins
of the second world war.

The extraordinary march of progress and the great economic
and social achievements of our countries over the last forty years
have not exhausted their potential in exclusively material development,
narrowly linked to economic circumstances but, on the contrary,
have been accompanied by a parallel process of true civic development,
thanks to a steadily growing awareness of the vital importance of
those ideals, which today form the most remarkable and essential
feature of our societies.

An original and invaluable contribution to this process has
been made by the work carried out assiduously every day by the Council
of Europe through its resolute action in defence of individual rights,
developed on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights,
whose fortieth anniversary we solemnly celebrated in November last
year in Rome.

This unique and irreplaceable moral inheritance now forms
an integral part of the great legacy of European and world culture;
however, it is necessary to protect and consolidate it, since it
runs the risk in future, if not of being lost, then at least of
being treated with more lukewarm enthusiasm and greater indulgence.
In fact, the commitment with which the countries of Western Europe
have pursued the promotion and protection of human rights, seen
mainly as civil and political rights, has hitherto been sustained
by the much-proclaimed differences between the West and what was
once referred to as “the other Europe”, and particularly by the
advantage the West derived from comparisons between the two.

Now that those considerations no longer apply, thanks to the
irresistible yearning of all nations for freedom and democracy,
our attachment to the cause of human rights must not weaken, even
though it has ceased to be an exclusive badge or banner in the jousting
between incompatible political systems. On the contrary, it must find
new and more constructive ways of achieving the same objectives,
in our continent and throughout the world.

This applies not only to us in the countries of Western Europe,
but also to the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which,
full of trepidation and hope, are turning once again to the practice
of democracy. They must not be tempted to think that their adoption
of the market economy will solve all their problems. This will not
be a unique panacea for all their ills.

On the contrary, the future holds in store for us so many
urgent challenges, old and new: mounting nationalism, a resurgence
of regional and ethnic conflicts, prejudice and intolerance, xenophobia
and racism. All of these are returning and gaining hold throughout
almost all of Europe, projecting their threatening shadows over human
destiny, human dignity and human rights.

With the European Convention on Human Rights and with the
attention it has always paid to the problem of minorities — and
I am thinking in particular of the important work being carried
out in this field by the European Commission for Democracy through
Law in Venice — the Council of Europe constitutes the necessary
focus for concerted joint action which alone can provide an effective
means of combating these scourges.

The system set up by the 1950 Convention has reached its full
maturity with the recognition by all member states of the right
to address individual petitions to the European Commission of Human
Rights and the compulsory jurisdiction of the Court, and with the
establishment of an impressive body of case-law by the organs of
the Convention. Consequently, the individual has really been placed
at the centre of the system, and rightly so.

However, we must also recognise that the wonderful European
system for the protection of human rights is mainly intended to
protect civil and political rights, whereas there is still a long
way to go in the field of economic, social and cultural rights.
The European Social Charter, signed in Turin on 18 October 1961,
is an instrument which certainly has many merits, but much remains
to be done to relaunch the activities aimed at promoting the protection
of social rights. All must lend their support to this relaunch,
which could be given a boost in October of this year on the occasion
of the celebrations, appropriately enough in Turin itself, to mark
the Social Charter’s thirtieth anniversary.

This task is all the more urgent and essential now that we
are being joined by the young democracies of Central and Eastern
Europe, whose newly won civil and political freedom would have very
fragile foundations if it was not accompanied by guarantees of social
justice, heralding the necessary economic development.

Although it is true that in recent decades the priority of
asserting economic and social justice was proclaimed in a vain attempt
to hide violations of civil and political freedoms, restoration
of these freedoms is not sufficient to dispense with the need to
tackle the problems caused by the bankruptcy of centralised, sterile,
bureaucratic systems both at the political and civil level and at
the economic level.

Freedom does not flourish in poverty and despair, nor does
purely formal liberalism which ignores the concerns of the weakest
have any moral value. That is why, today above all, countries with
a more long- established and consolidated tradition of freedom and
tolerance, such as the countries of Western Europe, must show wisdom and
humility when listening to the demands of those who, after making
their way 4th Sitting through a long dark tunnel, are turning their
faces to the bright sunlight of democracy. Freedom is not license.
Freedom is not indifference for those who are less rich, less prosperous,
or less well endowed than those who reached the finishing line first.

Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, one of the founding fathers
of Europe, Jean Monnet, used to say “Without men nothing is possible,
without institutions nothing lasts”.

It was that principle which inspired the states of Western
Europe when, more than thirty years ago, they established forms
of cooperation and set in motion processes of integration intended
to reinforce a comprehensive framework of stability, cooperation
and enhancement of international institutions.

The Council of Europe is one of those institutions, and as
such it is now called upon to play an essential role not only in
bringing the peoples and countries of the East closer to Western
Europe and its values, but also more generally in establishing a
dense, interconnected network of agreements, intended to reinforce
co-operative links between all the countries of Europe.

I would like to emphasise, as the head of state of a country
which has always firmly and unwaveringly believed in the importance
of a united and mutually supportive Europe, the need to enhance
the role of this institution, being well aware that it is one of
the many pieces which go to make up the complex and interconnected
mosaic of Europe.

There is no doubt that for Italy, engaged together with its
partners in a more ambitious project of economic and political integration,
the European Community is an absolute priority, and its reinforcement
is a primary objective of our endeavours, supported not only by
all political forces but also by economic and social forces and
a very large majority of the public.

Today more than ever, we find ourselves committed to a new
stage of intensifying and speeding up the process of integration
within the Community, and we hope that the two intergovernmental
conferences, on economic and monetary union and on political union,
will make a decisive contribution not only by extending the Community’s
field of action but also by steering an authentically supranational
entity into a decisive change of direction.

We are all collectively committed to this enterprise, though
with different degrees of emphasis, convinced as we are of the inevitability
of further progress in a movement which has become an essential
point of reference for an ever-growing number of countries.

However, we are looking to the strengthening of the Community
as an integral part of a wider, more comprehensive redefinition
of balances and relations in post-communist Europe. The European
Community not only cannot and must not turn in on itself, but must
form one of the pillars, no doubt the central pillar – and we say
this not with arrogance but with a responsible acknowledgement of
the facts – around which the new common European home will be built.

Together with NATO and the CSCE, the Council of Europe also
forms, in our view, an important part of this new balancing system,
which will represent for our continent and the whole world a new
guarantee of peace, stability and civilised, constructive coexistence
between peoples.

In the new situation miraculously created by the stirring,
epoch-making events of the past few years, Europe has a historic
task to perform; for this our countries will have to deploy considerable
initiative, which itself requires imagination and faith, and determine
what needs to be done to sustain the reform process in the countries
of Central and Eastern Europe.

Economic and technological aid are certainly necessary, and
steps are already being taken in this direction under an “open doors”
policy. It is, however, the political and legal structures which
constitute the true foundation of democratic institutions. The countries
of Western Europe, with their rich, long-standing heritage, must
therefore co-operate with those of Central and Eastern Europe to
enable the glorious traditions of our common history to revive and
flourish there.

I am convinced that, alongside the European Community and
the CSCE, the Council of Europe has a vitally important part to
play in the process of European integration as a “bridge” opening
the way to an initial version of the “common European home”, within
which new forms of co-operation will be possible.

The Council of Europe’s new pan-European role is evidenced
by the recent admission of Hungary and of the Czech and Slovak Federal
Republic, which we have welcomed most warmly. We hope that these
admissions can soon be followed by that of other countries, first
Poland, and then Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Romania. Appropriate and
increasing forms of co-operation will also be developed with the
Soviet Union and, as democratisation there advances, with Albania.

In the context of the new architecture of Europe, all existing
institutions will have to be used to the full and their activities
increasingly coordinated.

I therefore believe that the steps already taken to promote
dialogue, including political dialogue between the Council of Europe
and the European Community, and achieve effective complementarity
between the two institutions will be reinforced.

Furthermore, in the major operation of drawing up a new international
code of conduct based on respect for fundamental freedoms, the Council
of Europe’s valuable experience and knowledge could be of vital importance.
The Council of Europe is in fact, as was acknowledged in the Paris
Charter, the institution to which the CSCE countries may most usefully
refer for the purposes both of realising human rights and fundamental freedoms
and of establishing a parliamentary dimension for the Thirty-five.

Among other particularly innovatory forms of intra-European
co-operation, I would particularly like to mention the growing importance
of regional integration models, a development which the Council
of Europe finds congenial. In fact, with the new Europe being seen
as a subtle balance between many forms of diversity – as the Secretary
General, Mrs Lalumière put it – it has been suggested that the Council
of Europe could become the focus for these varied but complementary
realities, and so make an important contribution to uniting the peoples
of Europe. To this end, significant strengthening of the bond between
the Council and the Assembly of European regions could be valuable.

The ending of East-West confrontation has not – as events
in the Gulf have shown – removed the threats to peace, and these
threats can be overcome only in a new framework of international
relations based on rigorous observance of the principles of the
United Nations and on full compliance with the rules of international
legality.

In common with others, the Council of Europe condemned Iraq’s
attack on Kuwait.

Now that the crisis has passed its peak, we must make sure
we learn the lessons of those dramatic events.

In particular, the prestige and authority acquired by the
United Nations by military means must be used appropriately to facilitate
rapid progress towards lasting peace and stability not only in the
Gulf but also in regions bordering on it.

But, above all, steps must be taken to develop Europe’s natural
role as a fully open-minded and receptive partner in the shaping
in the Middle East of conditions for peace, stability and development
in a framework of regional economic solidarity guaranteeing the
dignity and security of all the peoples in the area.

The disastrous consequences of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait cannot
and must not undermine the bonds of friendship and co-operation
which exist between Europe, the southern shore of the Mediterranean
and the Arab world in general. Nor must there be any further evasion
of a solution to the still unresolved Palestine problem, which has
for years been a source of tension and concern in an area close
to us and to which a lasting and fair solution based on the relevant
Security Council resolutions should be found.

The trend in the international situation is towards growing
integration and world-wide cooperation in an ever more interdependent
world.

In this context, I am convinced that the Council of Europe
has a particularly important role to play in the process of European
integration as the pivotal institution between the Europe of the
Community, the members of the European Free Trade Association and
the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly can and
must be a fundamental reference point for any truly innovatory concept
of Europe and for our efforts to make available to the new democracies
in Central and Eastern Europe, in the course of fertile and mutually
enriching exchanges, the experience which Western societies have
acquired in the fields of human rights and social rights, fields
which are vital for the harmonious growth of democracy illuminated
by freedom.

Thus will we ultimately be able to come closer to what Kant
regarded as the ideal condition for everlasting peace, when we warned
that the violation of a right in any one part of the world should
be regarded as a violation in every other part of the world too.
Thus will we ultimately be able to give Europe a new role; it will cease
to be simply a point of arrival and become too a driving force in
a process which should lead us to the ideal goal of a vast world-wide
community based on the rule of law. Thus will we be able fully to
restore this glorious continent of Europe to what Mazzini called
its “torch-bearing role”, a role which it has long performed and
which entails offering to humanity as a whole the great ideas which
have flowered in it and turning them into universally applicable
lessons. (Loud applause)